Effects Of "Noticing" On Chinese College Non-English Majors' Learning Of English Phrasal Verbs

Based on theories on "noticing" and previous studies on focal attention, rehearsal and learning of phrasal verbs, this study investigates which level of "noticing" is more effective in the learning of English phrasal verbs for non-English majors, focal attention plus maintenance rehearsal, or focal attention plus elaborative rehearsal. It attempts to find out whether noticing has a delayed facilitative effect on the learning of phrasal verbs, whether the effects of focal attention plus elaborative rehearsal vary with students'proficiency, and whether maintenance rehearsal and elaborative rehearsal has the same effect on the recognition as on the recall of phrasal verbs.Two classes of second-year and one class of first-year non-English majors from a college participated in this study and each group consisted of 19 students. By guessing the meaning of ten target phrasal verbs in reading materials, the three groups paid focal attention to the phrasal verbs. Then one of the second-year groups repeatedly read the sentences containing the phrasal verbs as the treatment of maintenance rehearsal. The other two groups, one second-year and the other first-year, received the explicit instructions on phrasal verbs as the treatment of elaborative rehearsal. After the treatment, two post-tests were administered. The data were analyzed by SPSS. The major findings are as follows.First, focal attention plus elaborative rehearsal is far more effective in the learning of phrasal verbs than focal attention plus maintenance rehearsal in the short term.Second, the delayed facilitative effect of noticing is not significant. But there existed some cases in which the participants did better in the delayed post-test than in the immediate post-test concerning multiple-choice part, and so did a couple of cases in translation part.Third, the effects of focal attention plus elaborative rehearsal increase with students'proficiency.Fourth, the elaborative rehearsal has unrivalled advantage compared with maintenance rehearsal in terms of the effects on the recognition and recall of phrasal verbs if the immediate learning effect is evaluated. However, after one week, this advantage fades away. Elaborative rehearsal does not have prominent influence on the long-term recall of phrasal verbs.The study has proved a result of previous studies:focal attention plus elaborative rehearsal has better effects on the learning of second language than focal attention plus maintenance rehearsal. However, this study has found that the effects do not last long. Whether focal attention plus maintenance rehearsal has long term effects has never been studied by previous studies. In addition, this study added proficiency levels of learners as a variable, detected its influence on the effects of focal attention plus elaborative rehearsal and then got a positive answer. All these are the contributions this study has made to the theories on "noticing". It also shed some light on learning and pedagogy of phrasal verbs. For example, focal attention plus elaborative rehearsal is more effective in the learning of phrasal verbs than focal attention plus maintenance rehearsal in the short term, but not in the long term, which means further efforts should be made for the learning of phrasal verbs before the effects of focal attention plus elaborative rehearsal disappear. Another point is that to advanced learners, focal attention plus elaborative rehearsal is a good approach to learning phrasal verbs, but it does not have significant effects on learners at lower levels. Therefore, teachers should adopt different teaching approaches to phrasal verbs according to students'language proficiencies.